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Complex Urban Systems for Sustainability and Health

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Healthy dwellings in Sub-Saharan Africa: from residential waste management to children’s health

CUSSH researchers have developed and used tools to understand how unhealthy homes and neighbourhoods in Sub-Saharan Africa affect people’s health, especially children’s, in order to inform policy.

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27 November 2024

People living in deprived communities are regularly exposed to higher levels of outdoor and indoor pollution, either from burning at nearby landfill waste sites or through using unclean fuels. One method of alleviating this is to use biogas from waste directly as cooking fuel, which could help the existing waste management  problem in cities such as Kisumu, Kenya, and improve the health of its residents. Solid waste management is a complex issue involving numerous stakeholders with differing views. 

Publications

[1] Iddi S, Muindi K, Gitau H, Mberu B. (2022). Characterization of Healthy Housing in Africa: Method, Profiles, and Determinants. Journal of Urban Health, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-021-00603-5 


[2] Muindi K, Iddi S, Gitau H, Mberu B. (2023). Housing and health outcomes: evidence on child morbidities from six Sub-Saharan African countries. BMC pediatrics, 23(1), 1-13. https://bmcpediatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12887-023-03992-5 


[3] Dianati K, Zimmermann N, Milner J, Muindi K, Ezeh A, Chege M, ... Davies M. (2019). Household air pollution in Nairobi's slums: A long-term policy evaluation using participatory system dynamics. Science of the Total Environment, 660, 1108-1134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.12.430 


[4] Dianati K, Schafer L, Milner J, Gomez-Sanabria A, Gitau H, Hale J, ... Davies M. (2021). A system dynamics-based scenario analysis of residential solid waste management in Kisumu, Kenya. Science of the Total Environment. 777., 146200. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146200


[5] Salvia G, Zimmermann N, Willan C, Hale J, Gitau H, Muindi K, ... Davies M. (2021). The wicked problem of waste management: An attention-based analysis of stakeholder behaviours. Journal of Cleaner Production, 129200. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.129200

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